Hydrocarbon fluids such as oil and natural gas are obtained from a subterranean geologic formation, referred to as a reservoir, by drilling a well that penetrates the hydrocarbon-bearing formation. Once a wellbore is drilled, various forms of well completion components may be installed in order to control and enhance the efficiency of producing the various fluids from the reservoir. One piece of equipment which may be installed is a sensing system, such as a fiber optic based distributed sensing system.
To measure vibration or strain, distributed fiber optic sensing systems typically measure the amplitude of Rayleigh backscatter returned from the fiber optic sensor when excited by a narrow band optical source. This signal, while useful for detecting events, has a strain-optical signal transfer function that is both highly non-linear and unpredictable. Although useful results can be achieved using this technique, including tracking the movement of certain events and classifying various types of disturbances, the non-linear and unpredictable characteristics of the system can impede accurate classification of events and the use of the system for quantitative measurements.